Cellular phones have proven to be a convenient tool for the mobile society of today. Unfortunately, conventional cellular phones often require time-consuming multiple keystrokes to select and access an item of a menu in a menu tree. Furthermore, conventional cellular phones do not give an adequate visual reference to an item of a menu in a menu tree. Also, conventional cellular phones often fail to provide ample information as to which menus, menu items, sub-menus and sub-menu items are accessible.
Current menu-driven cellular phones navigate with either a two-dimensional navigation key in combination with a separate enter/select key, a three-dimensional navigation key, or a combination thereof. This document uses a “two-dimensional navigation key” to mean a four-way key having four sets of contacts, such as found on electronic games for navigating up, down, left and right in the usual manner. This document uses “three-dimensional navigation key” to mean a navigation key similar to a two-way key also having a fifth set of contacts which are activated by pressing on the navigation key in approximately the center. Conventional cellular phones require users to depress a navigation key and one or more other keys to access an item of a menu. Oftentimes, one must hit the navigation key and then hit at least one soft key or one key of the numeric keypad of the phone to access a menu item. This requirement for multiple keystrokes from multiple keys to access a menu item causes conventional cellular phones to be inefficient, inconvenient, and frustrating. Using the two-dimensional navigation key with a separate enter/select key is cumbersome and can be frustrating by requiring the user to focus more attention on moving their thumb or finger from the navigation key to the select/enter key and back. The three-dimensional navigation key solves this problem, but costs substantially more than a conventional two-dimension navigation key and is also more expensive than the combination of a conventional two-dimensional navigation key plus separate enter/select keys.
What is needed is a user-friendly menu-driven cellular phone which allows quick navigation through menus, menu items, sub-menus, and sub-menu items with fewer keystrokes. Specifically, to address the problems noted above, what is needed is a menu-driven cellular phone that allows a user to navigate through graphically-enhanced menus while maintaining contact with a single two-dimensional navigation key.